Yea I was looking into this more today, specifically your example of CEO of IBM.First, I was a tech recruiter for a decade on the company side. I learned a few things. You never just take the next person up. Ever. You always challenge that person with what the market will present so you are always making analytical decisions based on the quality of the talent you can access. The only difference is in hard to find engineering talent. You typically need a group of whatever discipline you are looking for. That can be based more on opportunity. You are always looking and engage when you can develop someone interested.

As to your example of CEO at IBM. Yes, Arvind Krishna was internal. Ginni Rometty was internal. They know whose next, more than likely. If they haven't decided they know it is one of a few people. Because they have a leadership development program and are nurturing leaders. They don't have a next person or they don't know what they will do. Apples and oranges. And even they hired externally in 1993 when the business was in a bad place. Another example is Intel, whose current CEO left the company for 10 years and ran EMC and VMWare before they hired him as CEO last year. And we aren't even talking about the right level here. IBM has nearly 300k employees, Intel has over 100k. Worcester has a few thousand.

And I am personally fine with Batista. Much more than his predecessor. They did him no favors doing this the way they did. One councilor even addressed accusations of back room deals during the last meeting. I don't have any info about anything like that , but they shouldn't be surprised about the accusations. They did it to themselves. Now they are going to put him in front of community meetings? This idea that they couldn't wait to let him do these meetings before appointing him is absolutely absurd. They have hundreds of openings is the reason? Almost all those hires will be levels away from the CM and who the CM is has no effect on their lives. People take jobs for money, benefits, and their immediate report. Not their manager's manager's manager's manager. Especially in a govt job. Its all absurd.

When Eric chose to speak up in support of a search, when he could have chosen silence, that was him saying he was confident. Just play it out and look like you did your job. Not like Augustus chose his successor.